


Put a Pin in That

by unicornsandbutane



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Cheesecake, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Science Bros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-03-31 23:31:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3997339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornsandbutane/pseuds/unicornsandbutane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newt tries to convince Hermann to participate in a charity event. What ensues might be classed as ‘hijinks’, ‘shenanigans’, or ‘hilarity’, depending upon your perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put a Pin in That

**Author's Note:**

> So awhile back, pixiepunch on tumblr agreed to do a drawing for me, in exchange for a fic. If you haven’t seen the drawing, it counts as a SPOILER for the fic, so I will include it at the END~!  
> IN THE MEAN TIME, while you wait to get your grubby mitts all over pixiepunch’s DELICIOUS ART, here is the fic I promised.

"It's for a good cause, y'know," Newt reminded him, following Hermann (to his eternal annoyance) down the hall.

"Your own personal amusement is not a cause to which I have any intention of contributing," Hermann replied, wondering if Newton planned to keep wheedling through the door once Hermann had reached his own quarters and locked the infuriating biologist outside of them.

"Don't be stupid, man. I'm talking about the relief effort, obviously. I don't feel like I need to tell you that kaiju and jaegers cause a lot of collateral damage, and that the Coastal Wall Project is sucking up a lot of the funds that used to go to rebuilding homes and businesses, and like, schools and shit."

"Yes, Newton, I received the same interdepartmental email that you did." He'd been rather shocked when he'd seen the subject line, but the scuttlebutt around LOCCENT was that the usual bake sales were decreed too significant a drain on resources and meal vouchers, and so the volunteer committee had been tasked with coming up with something else to pledge towards their customary charity sales. That the Marshal had approved this plan, though, made Hermann wonder if he'd even read the proposal. He had the sneaking suspicion that Miss Mori dealt with everything the Marshal deemed 'nonsense', as this was exactly her slightly sadistic sense of humour. The individuals responsible for choosing which submissions would go into the final product were supposed to be secret, but tittering over a lunch table made Miss Mori and Mr. Choi look like the most likely suspects.

"Oh come on, don't you wanna help out? Or are you just salty because they eighty-sixed your coveted caramel cookies?"

Hermann fumbled with his keys. "This isn't about biscuits, Newton. This is about your desire to embarrass me."

"You wouldn't have to get totally naked," Newt said, as if that would convince him. "I mean, I don't think that's the point of a pin-up. I think it's supposed to be-- what's that word you use? Cheeky."

Cheeky indeed! Fighting with his door (it had a tendency to stick) Hermann refused to dignify that with an answer. Only with Newt also leaning against it did the door finally scrape open. He muttered a hasty 'thank you', prepared to put the issue and himself to bed, but found Newt standing in the way. He thought it a bit of a contradiction, Newton helping him to open the door but then preventing him from closing it. He levelled a flat look at the man, and waited for him to catch on.

"I'll make you the damned caramel cookies myself," Newt offered, and Hermann's eyes narrowed. Newton wouldn't volunteer for that sort of thing unless he had an ulterior motive for getting saucy photographs of Hermann under the pretenses of a Shatterdome charity pin-up calendar. Newt seemed to pick up on the fact that he was making himself look very suspicious, because he went on to say, "Come on, man! We're all that's left of K-Sci, and I want us to be represented in the calendar! Unless one of us submits a picture, we're gonna be totally forgotten, like always."

"I should think our work will speak for itself," Hermann sniffed. He didn't need to be remembered by a tawdry photograph in a novelty calendar.

"I mean, by everyone at the 'Dome. Come on, I wanna play too."

"Then why don't you submit a photograph, Newton?" He tried to edge the man out of the door jamb, but found him persistent as a rash.

"Me? No, come on. Did you forget my ink? Somehow I think that'll put potential donors off." Another contradiction. So Newton knew how his tattoos made him look, especially given their subject matter, but still wore them like a badge of honour. Hermann shook his head.

"Well there are plenty of female engineers and still a few others in the Jaeger Academy. I'm sure the committee will be able to fill twelve months without too much problem." He was tired of standing, and, with no other options, allowed Newton into the room, just so he could sink into his chair and rest his aching back. Newt shut the door behind him.

"Okay, one, they're not K-Sci. And two, who says it has to be all girls?"

After a pause, Hermann said, "Newton, it's a pin-up calendar." He thought that should be fairly self-explanatory.

"Believe it or not, dude," Newt deadpanned, "There are people in this world who are not attracted to women."

Hermann quirked an eyebrow. "I am aware of that," he replied stiffly. "But that doesn't mean they would-- Newton this is ridiculous! The committee wouldn't choose my photograph anyway, you know that. Look at me."

"I am, and that's exactly why I think you'd sell a million copies. The first platinum pin-up calendar." Then he coughed and shrugged. "I mean you're always buttoned up to the laryngeal prominence. I think you'd have a significant market buying the things just to see if you had human skin instead of lizard-like scales under your clothes."

"What complete rubbish," Hermann muttered, turning his chair away from his lab mate and pretending to organise things on his desk.

Newt sighed. "Hermann, please? I'll totally owe you one. Tell me what you want, man."

Hermann considered. "My condition is this," he said finally, turning like a Bond villain in his chair. He paused just long enough to make Newton worry about not having given stipulations, and then said, "If I agree to this, you will never play that 90s nostalgia mix in the lab again." Truthfully, it wasn't even that he disliked the music (he was born in 1989 after all), but he was tired of having TLC stuck in his head and needed to have some leverage.

"What, never? That's kinda harsh, considering I'm only asking you to do something once..."

Hermann leaned back and steepled his fingers. "Those are my terms," he said, with an air of finality. "And you can take them or leave."

Rolling his eyes and clicking his tongue, Newton grumbled a rather put-upon sounding 'Fine,' before fishing his phone out of his jeans.

"Okay, well, I guess you'd better strip, then." He fiddled with his camera settings, muttering 'HDR or... Huh, what about...'

Hermann sat up. "What, you're just going to snap a photo on your phone, after all that?"

"This thing has a pretty damn good camera, dude," Newt insisted. "And I'm pretty sure Tendo's submitting a cellphone selfie, so. It's not unprecedented." His fingers swiped over the touchscreen. "I mean I might have to alter the color balance on photoshop or whatever, but yeah. Should be fine."

Hermann gave a derisive snort, but said nothing more, sitting with his arms crossed and his face turned to the side.

"Um, Hermann?"

"Yes, what is it?" He didn't want to look at Newton, while he did this. It was bad enough he'd been talked into it-- honestly it was only because he was certain no sane person would include his photo that he even agreed.

"I think you're missing the core concept of this project, here."

"What do you mean," he stated. It wasn't a question.

"I mean it's not exactly a pin-up if you sit there looking like your staff card."

With an icy glare in Newton's direction, Hermann shrugged out of his blazer and folded it crisply over the arm of his chair. He sat back again and waited for Newton to get on with it, take the damned photos and be done with this farce. But nothing happened. Newt simply stood there, phone poised between his fingers while he blinked expectantly.

"Well?" Hermann prompted, but Newt shook his head.

"You're putting the kibosh on the Spice Girls, I'll need more than just your blazer, dude."

With a snarl, Hermann viciously attacked the buttons of his Oxford shirt. He left it open, daring Newton to say one more thing. To his horror, the biologist approached him.

"Almost. It just needs a little more zazz." With no further warning, he pushed Hermann's undershirt up, revealing the slope of his abdomen, the curve of his body as he slumped on his chair. "Oh look, skin after all," he commented, while Hermann fought to keep a level head.

"Are you quite finished?" Hermann asked, exasperated.

"Just one more thing." His fingers brushed Hermann's lower belly, and Hermann sucked in a breath, but Newton wasn't even paying attention to him. Instead, he hooked a finger into the hem of Hermann's trousers.

Hermann startled, and snatched up his cane as if to smack Newton with it, but Newt only popped the button and stood back.

"There. Perfect," Newt declared. He raised his phone again, and Hermann shifted uncomfortably, causing his zipper to inch down of its own accord. "Oh my god, yes!" Newt exclaimed, snapping photo after photo. Hermann frowned, still clutching his cane like a lifeline and fully prepared to throw it at Newton if need be. "Look at the camera, Hermann, c'mon."

He didn't need his glasses to do so, and Newt knew it, but Hermann perched the frames on his nose anyway, and adjusted them pointedly in Newton's direction. Newt took several photos of that, as well, and knelt to get some more dynamic angles. Only when he noticed goosebumps prickling Hermann's lower abdomen did he stand and open the Photos app on his phone, to see if he'd gotten any good shots.

"Okay, cool! We got some good stuff here, Herms. I'm gonna mess with these in Photoshop, and I'll show you what I come up with." He brushed off his knees. "'Kay?" Hermann could tell that was Newton's best attempt at a winning smile, and it was only partially successful. He pulled his undershirt down again and harrumphed loudly. "Alright, so..." Newton cast about, seemingly at a loss. Hermann arched a brow. "So I'll see ya," he finished blandly, before turning, hauling the door open with a curse and a grunt of exertion, and stealing out into the hall. Hermann waited a few seconds before it seemed Newton remembered to close the door after him and, belatedly, did so.

Surprisingly, Newton had finished his photoshoppery by the very next day, and trotted into the lab about ten minutes after Hermann had settled down with his first cup of tea.

"Okay so look," Newton began, brandishing his phone. "I sent them to myself so I could show you the finished product." Hermann flinched inwardly. He'd hoped to forget the whole ordeal, but Newton was insistent. "Look, see? Camera one, camera two. Camera one... Camera two." He swapped between the edited photo and the original, and back again. "I upped the contrast and shifted it a little redder, because the fluorescents in your room made the photos kinda blue-gray... Are you looking?" He pulled a pencil out of his shirt pocket and started pointing out areas on the screen. "I cleaned up this area here... There was some like, dust or whatever on the lens that made weird spots."

Hermann was not looking. He'd gotten one glance at what he looked like in the photos, and decided that was more than enough. He could feel embarrassment stinging his cheeks, and behind his eyes. Newton seemed unaffected, but one look at his own bare midriff, his unbuttoned and half-zipped trousers, his open shirt and disgruntled expression, made him hope against all else that the Committee wouldn't select this photo. He didn't think he'd be able to face himself in the mirror, much less maintain a respectable academic career. What on earth was Newton thinking?

"--I mean I could push the brightness in your skin, make you look all porcelain or whatever, if you want," he gestured dismissively with his pencil holding hand, "or like, up the saturation in your clothes--" Suddenly, as his hand waved in the air, his pencil flew out of his fingers and skittered off under the desk. "Damn," he muttered, stooping to look for it. "Man, it's all the way back there. Hold on..." He placed his phone down on the surface of the desk and bent again, trying to reach the pencil without kneeling under his own desk. It tended to be a bit sticky under there, and he didn't want to ruin his jeans.

Hermann picked up the phone, and surreptitiously flicked through the photo album. After a moment's fiddling, he replaced the phone, exactly as he'd found it.

"This is gonna be awesome, dude, you'll see," Newt promised, and Hermann muttered a choice epithet or two but otherwise, let it lie.

It was several weeks later that Hermann and Newton, engaged in a lengthy discussion of what was the saddest Disney death, of all things-- that is, after Mufasa, of course-- nearly walked right into a crowd of people gathered around the notice board outside the mess hall.

"Whoa, whoa, what?!" Newt yelped, very nearly tripping over Tendo Choi's wingtip shoe, and flailing. Hermann steadied him with a hand in the centre of his back, and waited while Newton pushed his glasses back up his nose. "What's goin' on?"

Tendo sipped his coffee calmly, corners of his mouth turned up just slightly around the mug. "Go and look, brother," he drawled in his customary fashion. Hermann stayed where he was, while Newt fought his way to the front of the crush of people, and then heard the biologist's surprised shout once he got there.

"What the hell?" came Newt's distinctive squeak. "What the actual hell," he followed up, before another half minute of struggling out of the crowd.

"Well, what is it, then?" Hermann prompted, not liking the sly look Tendo was giving them one bit.

"The final picks for the calendar are up!" Newt explained, running hands through his hair. Hermann's usual frown deepened. "You're not in it, but I am! I don't understand, I don't even remember being submitted!"

"Strange, it came from your email address..." Tendo commented, apparently not bothered about revealing that he had indeed been on the committee.

"What? No I definitely would remember something like... Unless... You!" He rounded on Hermann, who had turned his focus to really, anywhere else. "Care to explain how I'm Mister January, Doctor Gottlieb?"

Hermann coughed, and by then, the crowd had thinned enough that Hermann could see the printed photo, tacked to the board under the word 'January' in Mako Mori's precise, rounded handwriting. It depicted Newton, from behind, fully dressed, but bent over in his impossibly tight jeans. In the photo, he braced his hand on the top of his desk, and his rolled-up sleeve showed the musculature of his forearm, but his tattoos, viewed from the underside of the arm, were not explicit enough to determine what they depicted, outright. He seemed to be looking for something under the shadowy bulk of his workbench.

Hermann thought it was Newton's own fault if he didn't check his Sent Mail, nor notice when 'volunteer@shatterdome.org.hk' came up as a suggested recent contact when he went to send his own photographic submission in. Still not looking at Newton, he answered, quietly:

"I suppose, technically, it would be _Doctor_ January, for you."

\------------

AND, here is the aforementioned drawing that pixiepunch did for me. The prompt for the fic was, "something that would make Hermann make that face."

 

**Author's Note:**

> That's a wrap! Hope you enjoyed... If so, you can find me on tumblr under the same name. Thanks for reading~!


End file.
